Phil and I met in 2006 in a bar in downtown New York City. We were both there with friends and started talking, and realized we were both wearing blue Vans sneakers (which would later be our save-the-date!). A few days later Phil took me on our first date to a vegan restaurant, a very smooth move since I’m a vegan, and he is not. We discovered we had a lot in common beyond our sneakers and ever since then we’ve been inseparable. After four years of dating we got engaged on Memorial Day.

I started planning right away. I combed magazines, Esty and blogs for inspiration and got a lot of ideas, but things really started falling into place when we found our venue, Villa Parker. We decided to have the wedding in Colorado, where I am from, instead of New York City, where we live, for a few reasons—it was much more cost effective, my mom was on the ground there and could do a lot of planning, and it would be a fun destination for our friends and family. We felt the Villa had a rustic “Colorado” feel but was also very beautiful with great indoor and outdoor options for our ceremony and reception, so we chose it as our venue. From there some themes began to solidify— purple and blue vintage fabric, kraft paper, mason jars, hearts, owls and cupcakes all inspired me and were woven throughout the wedding from the invites to décor.

I love crafting and have very handy friends and family, so the wedding became a real community effort packed full of hand-made details. We made almost everything for the wedding, from the napkins, cake stands and cake toppers to the programs, lemonade straws and escort cards. I was very ambitious taking on so many projects and there is no way they would have come together so beautifully without all of the help everyone readily offered. There were a handful of nights my parents and I stayed up late tying ribbons, stuffing bags, gluing and ironing, and while it was tedious work we had a lot of fun together. One of our favorite hand-made touches of the day was beautiful cover for our chuppah my mother-in-law worked on for a year hand embroidering which was an incredible gesture and something we will cherish forever. She also baked bags of her famous granola for everyone to take at the end of the night as favors for a yummy breakfast the next day.

The flowers were one of my favorite parts of the day, and our florist was wonderful to work with. I had made fabric boutonnieres for all of the groomsmen. She took the same fabric and included it in my bouquet and the bridesmaid’s bouquets and corsages for family. Wildflower arrangements sat on the tables in clear mason jars alongside lanterns made out of gorgeous antique blue mason jars. The table numbers were little chalkboard hearts, and we used chalkboards for signs throughout the wedding—a nod to the fact that I am a preschool teacher and come from a family of teachers. Another meaningful detail was that the tables were lined with kraft paper from a roll my grandfather used in his pharmacy almost 50 years ago! Our guestbook was a DIY photobooth using a laptop computer; my cousin and her friend manned the whole evening. Guests took silly pictures with props and then printed them on index cards and wrote notes below their picture before taping it in a scrapbook—the results were fabulous and so much fun to look at the next day while eating leftover cupcakes!

Our whole wedding day – from getting ready by having a Michael Jackson dance party with my bridesmaids and bridesmen to when we made our grand exit to our limo with a sparkler send off (a surprise from the maid of honor) – was truly magic. The thing that stands out the most to Phil and I though is our ceremony, which our Rabbi made very personal and meaningful. We come from two different religious backgrounds (Catholic and Jewish) and the Rabbi helped our families work together to incorporate traditions to honor both faiths. Phil and I also created our own ketubah, or Jewish marriage contract, that reflected exactly what we wanted to pledge to each other, which was read at the ceremony. Standing in the warm Colorado sun under the beautiful chuppah that Phil’s mother made and knowing all of our friends and family were there supporting us was the best feeling in the world—we both felt so lucky and grateful. We can’t believe how quickly the day passed but felt like it turned out just the way we wanted—it was a ton of fun and felt exactly like “us.”